


hands.

by ceeba



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, canon typical language etc, kind of a 5x12 fix because i needed to, mentions of depression and suicidal thoughts, mentions of triggery things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 10:44:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3765181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceeba/pseuds/ceeba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey Milkovich has always hated his hands, but Ian Gallagher doesn’t.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hands.

Mickey Milkovich has always hated his hands. For has long as he can remember, they have been a symbol of violence and destruction. From the first time his dad had hit him and yelled at him to fight back when he was three years old, to when he was seven and he wrapped his small fingers around the handle of a gun for the first time, right up to his fourteenth birthday when Iggy and his friends had laughed and cheered while one of them took a needle to Mickey’s knuckles and branded him with that violence for the rest of his life. He had laughed through the sting of it, something he later learned was exactly what he did best.

Mickey remembers one time when he was eleven years old, hearing Mandy – only nine at the time – crying in her room after Terry had bulldozed his way out of the house. Mickey had pushed at her door with his dirty hands shaking. He had snapped at her to shut the fuck up with a snarl on his lips but a softness in his eyes that only his sister ever seemed to see. She had turned to him tearfully and reached out to him, brushing her fingers across his knuckles once, quick as lightning, before pulling back and telling him to get the fuck out of her room. That had been the first time in Mickey’s life that he felt like his hands were made for more than killing.

(When Mickey meets Ian Gallagher, they’re barely seven years old though he doesn’t remember it. The first memory Mickey has of him is Ian hiding in a store room while Mickey and his brothers try to breaking the fucking door down to get to the asshole who hurt their sister. Mickey’s hands are pounding against the door, vicious and unrelenting, doing what they do best).

Mickey Milkovich has always hated his hands, but Ian Gallagher doesn’t. Later, when he starts hanging around like a lost puppy, he looks at Mickey’s tattooed knuckles and he smiles. He doesn’t wince or cower or even laugh like everyone else. One corner of his stupid mouth lifts just slightly like the stupid fucker is fond or something. It makes Mickey’s eyes narrow in a glare as something clenches painfully in his chest.

Ian, for some fucked up reason that Mickey can’t figure out, actually seems to like being around Mickey, or he at least tolerates the company for a good fuck. Nobody would spend that much time around a Milkovich unless they were getting something good out of it, Mickey reasons with himself. 

Fucking Gallagher is upset about something. Mickey doesn’t know what (he does) and he doesn’t give a shit anyway (he does), but Ian is fucking Mickey rough and relentless in the back room of the Kash and Grab. Mickey’s knuckles are bruised and split and he’s gripping the shelving in front of himself, anchoring himself. He holds on so tight its painful, trying to make himself focus on what this is really about – getting off, nothing else. He has his eyes squeezed shut against the thoughts of moremoremore that are trying to break through. He’s just about managing it, too, until the stupid shithead that is Ian Gallagher wraps his stupid shithead hands over Mickey’s. They’re so fucking huge, covering Mickey’s whole hands, covering the words that mock Mickey every damn day. And Mickey – Mickey has had those stupid long fingers pressed up inside him, coaxing noises he didn’t even know he was capable out of his parted lips but this, Ian holding his fucking hands as he pounds into him… it feels way more intimate than any of that shit they’ve done before. It’s almost suffocating, except for how Mickey can suddenly breathe easier than he ever has before.

After that, it keeps happening. It’s almost as if Ian is testing him, as if he’s pushing just slightly more every day to see what Mickey will let him get away with. It starts with when they’re fucking, Ian’s hands finding Mickey’s to hold him in place, to get more leverage. But then it turns into other stupid fucking things, like Ian’s hands hovering when he passes Mickey something to stack on a shelf at work, or a long finger brushing across Mickey’s knuckles as he hands over their shared joint. Somehow, that turns into Mickey letting Ian touch him once they’ve finished fucking, sweat cooling on their flushed skin. He lets Ian brush a thumb along his wrist once, twice, three times before he jerks away and smirks as coldly as he can while his knees are shaking and his heart is pounding.

(When Mickey goes to juvie, Ian, the stupid fuck, visits him with wide, hopeful eyes. He presses his hand up against the glass like some lovesick little bitch and Mickey snaps at him. He can’t stand to have the ruined hands that put him here anywhere near Ian’s, not anymore).

Ian’s hands aren’t anything close to clean - he’s been in his fair share of fights, seen his fair share of violence – but they aren’t like Mickey’s, either. They aren’t scarred and damaged, they aren’t hopeless. When Ian holds things, touches things, it isn’t with the intention to destroy. When he touches Mickey, it feels like the exact opposite.   
The first time they sleep in the same bed, Ian keeps his hand wrapped loosely around Mickey’s wrist all night. Mickey won’t let Ian hold his hand, but this is so close that it aches. Mickey lies awake and stares at Ian while he sleeps. His gaze is zoned in on Ian’s mouth, the way his chest rises and falls as he breathes, and all Mickey can think about is stealing those breaths straight from him with his own mouth, which, fuck.

(When Mickey finally does kiss Ian, he grips the back of the van seat to stop himself reaching out. He’s afraid that if he touches Ian then he won’t know how to let go).

Ian leaves, and Mickey knows that it’s his fault. With him gone, Mickey loses the sense of stability that came with not feeling so fucking worthless all the time. He starts going on more runs with his brothers again, letting his fists do the talking when people underestimate exactly what he’s capable of. He’s angry and he’s ruthless, just like he always has been, except for how now he really does have nothing to lose. It’s a calming feeling, knowing that there is nobody to disappoint or let down anymore. He’s just your regular piece of Southside trash. Good for nothing, just like he’s always known. At least now there’s nobody crowding in close to him, expecting better. With Ian gone, nobody expects anything from him at all.

Mickey clenches his fists at his side when Lip fucking Gallagher stands on his porch and tells him that Ian is missing. Lip is a fucking smug piece of shit, but Mickey doesn’t think Ian would be too happy with him if he punched the stupid asshole’s face in. He hates that he still cares what Ian would think. Mickey worries silently about it, but it isn’t until Mandy asks him to that he goes to find Ian. He looks at her and all he can see is her at nine years old, brushing her trembling fingers across his hand, and it reminds him of how he feels when Ian is around. And fuck that, he thinks, because he was never supposed to feel anything at all.

(When he kisses Ian in the club, he holds him close. He tangles his fingers in the hair at the back of Ian’s neck, brushes his thumb below Ian’s bottom lip, holds his face in his palms, possessive and revealing. For the first time in too long, he feels like his hands can be gentle. That night, he curls one around Ian’s bicep as they sleep, like he can stop Ian ever leaving again if he just holds on tight enough).

Mickey starts to hold on too tightly, letting Ian cling back. Eventually, he knows, he’ll hold on so tight that he’ll suffocate whatever this relationship is that they’re forging. Milkovich’s don’t get happy endings, he knows that. In the meantime, though, he lets his broken hands cling to something beautiful.

Ian gets sick and Mickey kicks himself for not seeing it coming sooner. He should’ve known, should’ve seen the signs. Mickey reaches out with shaking hands, trying to hold everything together, trying to keep it all safe, but Ian is already gone.

In the moments that Ian will let him, Mickey holds him close. He doesn’t touch him like he used to, impatient and rough and needy. The push and pull they used to have – the fucking and the fighting, both as rough as each other – is muted and calmed. Now all Mickey can do is cradle Ian’s pale, exhausted face in his own trembling hands, press his lips carefully to Ian’s shoulder, his eyes, his neck, anywhere he can. There isn’t anything else he can do.

(When Ian leaves again, Mickey feels like he has been gutted from the inside out. The first time, Mickey hadn’t given enough. This time, he gave too much, gave everything. He had ripped his heart right from his body and handed it to Ian with his bloody, broken hands. It didn’t matter. It still wasn’t enough to make Ian stay).

 

Mickey sits in an alleyway somewhere in the middle of town. One of Sammi’s bullets had scraped his shoulder and another had clipped his thigh before the police had dived on top of her and carted her away. He’s bleeding but he isn’t dying, and he isn’t sure anymore if that’s a blessing or a curse. He stares down at his hands, curled into fists and going white with pressure, and he feels nothing but a hollow ache in his chest where everything he loves used to live.

Eventually, he picks himself off the cold ground and limps home. The house is empty, not that Mickey had expected anything else. He thinks about calling Mandy but they haven’t spoken since she left town and he doubts she wants to listen to him wining about shit that is all his fucking fault anyway. Instead he tears apart the whole house, breaks everything he can find that’s breakable and can’t help but think that it’s himself that he’s really destroying. Letting people in, loving them, trusting them. Dumb fucking move. He breaks and he destroys and he wrecks because that is what these hands were made for, after all.

(When Mickey finally stops smashing, he collapses onto the couch. He loses months to cheap vodka and bad weed. He barely sees anyone, other than his brothers when they drift in and out around him. He doesn’t remember the last time he ate and he didn’t ever get around to dressing those wounds he got the day Sammi shot at him, and eventually the world falls into darkness just as he had hoped it would).

 

Mickey is fucking pissed when he wakes up, mostly because he’s waking up at all. It doesn’t help that the first words he hears are “you stupid piece of shit.”

He cracks an eye open and sees Svetlana hovering over him, baby on her lip. It doesn’t take him long to realise they’re in a hospital.

“Baby needs father. You stay alive,” she continues, glaring at him like she wants to kill him herself. Mickey ignores her, staring at Yevgeny. The kid is making these weird fucking gurgling noises and biting at his tiny hand and Mickey doesn’t know why but the sight of it makes his eyes sting. Doctors have probably got him on some weird fucking drugs or something. “Get better, then me and baby come back,” Svet says, hitching the kid up and turning to leave. Before she does, she looks back at Mickey with a rare soft gaze and says “your boyfriend is outside.”

Mickey’s breath leaves him in a rush. He hasn’t seen Ian in months, doesn’t know that he wants to. He ignores the feelings in his chest and says “not my boyfriend” with his voice hoarse from lack of use. “Tell him he can go fuck himself,” he says.

Svetlana laughs, and it would sound cruel to anyone who doesn’t know her. She says, “I send him in,” and that’s the end of that.

Mickey closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep. He keeps a steady count in his head to keep his breathing even but it all goes to shit the minute he hears shuffling footsteps in the doorway. He loses his breath and his eyes fly open because it’s been months and he’s only human.

Ian looks good. He’s got some colour back and he isn’t as thin as he was. He looks fresh and almost healthy, at least physically. Mickey stares like a man starved and Ian stares right back, shrugs his shoulders. The movement snaps Mickey back to himself and he looks away.

“The fuck you doing here?” he says.

Ian huffs out a laugh. “Good to see you too, Mick. You look like shit, in case you were wondering.”

“Well so do you, douchebag,” Mickey lies.

Ian just grins at him like a fucking circus freak. He looks so much like he did when they first started all this that Mickey has to work hard not to throw his insides up all over the perfectly white floor. “How are you feeling?” Ian asks him.

“Fucking peachy.”

“That good, huh?”

“Fuck off.”

Ian smiles again and invites himself to fucking sit on the stupid chair beside Mickey’s bed. “So, you tried to kill yourself,” he says, as if he’s telling Mickey the fucking weather or some shit.

“The fuck I did,” Mickey grunts.

“Alright. But you didn’t try to live, either.”

“Don’t fucking lecture me like you’re any better at it.”

“That’s fair,” Ian nods, scratching at the back of his neck.

Mickey looks away again. He has the flimsy hospital sheets bunched up in his fists and he tries to focus on that. He tells himself that his hands are violent and rough and he’ll tear these sheets apart just to prove it.

“Mick,” Ian says, his voice gone all soft and wavering, and Mickey looks up to see Ian staring at the scrunched up sheets. He reaches out tentatively, like he thinks Mickey might kill him for it. He touches his fingertips to Mickey’s white knuckles and Mickey can feel himself relax immediately. He’s so fucking angry that he can’t even control his own body against Ian’s touch anymore. Braver now, Ian slides his whole hand over Mickey’s, thumb resting against the pulse point on his wrist and stroking softly. “I – ” Ian starts, stutters. “I did some fucked up shit, Mickey, before. When I was manic. I’m still trying to fix most of it. But what I said to you, that last day at my house – ”

“Don’t, Ian.”

“Please, Mick. I just. I need you to know that I didn’t mean it.”

“Ian – ”

“You know that, don’t you?” Ian barrels on, “Please tell me that you know I didn’t mean it.”

Mickey looks away. He can’t look at that naïve hope in Ian’s eyes, can’t bear to see the guilt there. He can’t deal with this while he’s so damn tired.

Ian curses, taking Mickey’s silence as his answer. He grips Mickey’s hand tighter and his voice is wavering but full of conviction when he breathes out “I love you.”

“Fuck, Ian,” Mickey snatches his hand away.

“I’ve never said it. I didn’t know I needed to. I thought you –” he cuts himself off and Mickey scoffs at the sudden silence.

“You thought what, that I knew? That I assumed? Yeah, sure, that sounds just like me,” Mickey says, brushing his thumb across his chin like that’ll stop him needing to cry.

“I’m sorry. I should’ve – it doesn’t matter now. I just… I wanted, needed you to know that I didn’t mean it. You were the only person who tried to understand, who didn’t tell me I was crazy or just like my fucking mother. You tried, and I – I don’t have any excuses. I don’t know what was going through my head but it wasn’t what I meant. I needed space, I guess, I wanted to be away from everything. It was the easiest way I could think to get you to leave.”

Mickey stares at the ceiling, breathing carefully through his nose. He wants to fight back but he can feel sleep coming for him. “You pussied out on me, Gallagher,” he mumbles.

Ian laughs, reaches for Mickey’s hand again. Mickey is powerless to do anything but cling back. “Missed you,” Ian says, not quite looking Mickey in the eye. Mickey knows the words don’t come any easier to Ian than they do to him. “Do me a fucking favour and stay alive when you get out of this shithole, ok?”

“Yeah, or what?”

“Or I’ll have to come babysit you, you piece of shit.”

Mickey smiles, exhaustion and relief making his eyes slip shut. He’ll give Ian so much shit for all of this later and they’ll have to fucking talk about everything but right now he’s too fucking tired to punish him any more than he has to.

“That a promise?” he says, and the last thing he feels before he gives in to sleep is Ian pressing his smile into Mickey’s knuckles.

 

Mickey Milkovich still fucking hates his hands, but at least he can kind of accept that Ian Gallagher doesn’t.


End file.
